Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [90]
“I guess we could ask your dad for a jump.”
“Yes, we could do that. I think it’s a bad idea.”
“So, what do you suggest?”
“We could just sit here and talk.”
“Sure,” I said. “But won’t he see us out here?”
“You can’t see anything out here from in there at night. He’ll never look out here ’til it gets near eleven thirty. Plus, he thinks we’ve already left.”
Huh. OK. Seemed like a plan. And so we talked.
We talked about teachers we liked and didn’t, we talked about having siblings, we talked about the football team and the choir and where each of us were thinking of going to college. We even talked about our battles on student council.
All the while I kept wondering when the “sex” thing would start. I had no idea where to begin so I assumed she would just take the lead—I feel you can assume this when the someone in question comes to the window and greets you in a bra—and so I soldiered on through more conversation about All in the Family, Peter, Paul & Mary, the new freeway through Flint, Jarts, Jesus, Uptown Bob’s vs. Downtown Bob’s, how I got out of gym class in tenth grade, Jim Morrison’s recent death, Walt Disney World opening next month, her new bell bottoms, the recent Apollo 15 mission, the Concert for Bangladesh, where was Attica, a new fabric store she discovered in the mall, eighteen-year-olds getting the right to vote—everything but sex. Having exhausted all topics for discussion, I threw caution into the backseat.
“So, we never talked about you at the window last week,” I said, as if I was just going on to the next item in the news.
“Oh, you mean these?” she said as she pulled her sweater down a bit to reveal a bit more cleavage.
“Yes, those. Where did you get them?”
This made her laugh, and she slid over on the seat and put her head on my shoulder.
“I just thought you deserved a peek,” she said. “Nothing more.”
“You mean nothing more then, or nothing more now?”
“I mean, you saw what you saw, now let’s enjoy this moment.”
I did my best to enjoy it. Her hair smelled like tropical fruit, but I had no idea what tropical fruit really was unless bananas counted. I put my fingers through her hair to move it out of her face. She sat up.
“Oh my, look what we’ve done to the windows!”
What windows? would have been a good question, because I couldn’t see the windows, or at least I couldn’t see out of them. Every inch of them was steamed up after two hours of us yapping away and two minutes of me thinking “something” was gonna happen. We could no longer see the house, and certainly no one could see the inside of this car. If this was going to be the moment, then now was the time to act.
“Wow,” she went on, “it looks like we’ve been messing around in here all night!”
“So let’s justify the steam!” I suggested clunkily.
“I think I better get inside before my dad sees us.”
And with that, she opened up the car door.
“C’mon,” she said, “we gotta see if he can get your car started.”
I got out and went with her to the door. We walked in and there were her mom and dad and younger sister, all sitting in the living room.
“How was the movie?” her mother inquired.
“Really good,” Sharon replied convincingly. “Dad, we pulled back in and Mike’s car died in the driveway. Do you think you could look at it?”
Mr. Johnson, like most dads in an auto town, was more than happy to be asked to display his mechanical prowess. “Sure, let’s see what the problem is.”
We walked outside and down the driveway. As we approached the Impala, the windows were still half-steamed! I started to prepare my defense.
“Mike, why don’t you give it a start?” he said, oblivious to the moisture from his daughter’s mouth that had altered the look of my car.
I quickly got in and rolled the windows down in order to help dissipate the translucency of the windshield. I also turned the key in the ignition to the sound of nothing.
“OK, let’s give it a jump and see if that’ll work.”
He went to the garage and drove his car back to mine, got out his jumper cables and connected his battery to the one under my